Wade McIntyre: Health care in a nutshell

Wednesday

Jul 29, 2009 at 12:01 AMJul 29, 2009 at 7:05 AM

The guys in the white coats are kind of a necessary evil, like lawyers. Both professions do good making people well, or whole, but are made up primarily of businessmen and businesswomen interested in making money. Doctors need disease and injuries in order to have successful businesses as surely as lawyers require automobile and workplace accidents to make a living.

Wade McIntyre

Eat a lot, sleep a lot, brush ‘em like crazy,
Run a lot, do a lot, never be lazy.
“Mama Says”
Wilson/ Love, The Beach Boys

Everyone has an opinion and piece-of-the-pie stake in the country’s healthcare system.

That’s because we all have to go to the doctor when we get sick or need someone to take the edge off our pain.

The guys in the white coats are kind of a necessary evil, like lawyers. Both professions do good making people well, or whole, but are made up primarily of businessmen and businesswomen interested in making money. Doctors need disease and injuries in order to have successful businesses as surely as lawyers require automobile and workplace accidents to make a living.

Maybe that is part of the reason why we recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing rather than an anniversary for the cure of cancer.

Without downplaying the marvels of medicine in the past 50 years, we should also remember that the greatest health advance in the past 100 years, the one that has saved the most lives and increased life spans the most, resulted from the mass installation of indoor plumbing.

Might not the next great advance come from diet awareness and adherence to the principles of good diet pertaining to individual health.

Rather than treating the bloated health care system as a sacred cow, it is reasonable to suggest that its needs an overhaul. That’s why naysayers and reformers alike are on Capitol Hill debating how to produce the revamp that President Obama promised in the 2008 election.

Here are a few suggestions to make health care work better in the marketplace. Let’s consider:

• Placing a surcharge tax on pharmaceutical companies when they advertise prescription drugs on television. The surcharge will bring in millions of dollars to help pay for a new plan. As part of a goal to reduce America’s shameful overindulgence on cradle to the grave prescription drugs, let’s also give the fledgling alternative health care industry public service time on the airwaves.

• Banning prescription drug advertising on television altogether. It’s a doctor’s job to prescribe appropriate prescription drugs, and not in the interest of good medicine to have patients asking doctors for a new drug because it is repeatedly advertised on the "ABC Nightly News" with Charles Gibson.

• Putting an end to the exchange of gifts and trips by pharmaceutical companies to doctors and medical professionals in exchange for them steering patients toward the company’s product.

• Requiring medical school students to take 12 hours of dietary and nutritional studies, rather than the current average of three hours that most doctors graduate from medical school with.

• Allowing people to continue smoking, drinking and eating as much as they want or can afford.

They should, however, be prepared to pay for those indulgences with increased insurance premiums and surcharges on visits to the doctor or hospital, while those who choose a more healthy lifestyle pay less.

Some say tampering with America’s health care will lead to a loss of personal freedom. The answer in a nutshell is that health care reform will break shackles the health insurance, medical and pharmaceutical industries have wrapped around Americans and their families ­ – both those that have insurance and those who do not.